AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 183 Radio and X-Ray Pulsars
Poster, Thursday, 9:20am-4:00pm, January 12, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[183.04] Predictable Glitches in PSR J0537-6910

F.E. Marshall (NASA/GSFC), J. Middleditch (LANL), E.V. Gotthelf (Columbia U.), Q.D. Wang (U.Mass.), W. Zhang (NASA/GSFC)

We report the accumulated results of more than six and a half years of monitoring of PSR J0537-6910, the 16-ms pulsar in the Large Magellanic Cloud, using data acquired with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. During this campaign the pulsar experienced some 20 sudden increases in frequency ("glitches") of at least one microHz, amounting to a gain of six parts per million of rotation frequency superposed on its normal spindown of ~-1.99 x 10-10 Hz/s. The time interval from one glitch to the next obeys a strong linear correlation to the amplitude of the first glitch, with a mean slope of about 400 days per parts per million in the glitch amplitude. As a result, the time of the next glitch can usually be predicted to an accuracy of a few days. The magnitude of the pulsar spindown continues to increase, and thus its timing age continues to decrease at a rate of about 1/2 year per year. The implications of these observations are discussed.


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